“It’s not enough that we build product that function,
that are understandable and usable,
we also need to build products that bring joy and excitement, presure and fun, and , yes , beauty to people’s lives”

FlexibleLove is a Taiwanese honeycomb furniture brand, which born in 11 years ago from a student’s graduation project. When it came out first time, it was a huge hit to the media , and after all the virally spreading social media reports, they started to build a brand for the market. This is the very first beginning of this brand.During these 10 years, they took some time building the stable marketing chain, the relationship with relyable wholesales partners in Europe and so on. Because of putting efforts mostly on whole sales and marketing, instead of working on branding things, such as developing brand values, identity , improvements of products ...etc, they become just like an OEM factory.
This is why they need to rebrand.

I joined this brand was while they just start to rebranding.
Since i was the only designer background in the small team, i had to deal with everything related to design. No matter it’s visual side or product side. The most highly priority job for the brand is the new official website. They need a platform to re-introuduce themselves in a new concept, new core value, new structure of brand to customers. Bussiness way also changed from B2B to B2C, in order to know target customers better. The most important thing in B2C is building understandable messeges for cummunucation to make sure our points are really delivered to customers. They believe what makes brand be loved by people one of the reason is also based on the agreement of the brand’s value. After website start developing, it also come with several times of product shooting for official website.

The third version of HOME page for website.

After formulate the website structure, inluding 5 pages : HOME ; HELLO ; SHOP ; DESIGN(MAKE) ; ASK pages, give each pages it’s own purpose , then started the design for each pages. All the elements used on web need to flollow carefully to brand’s new CI guideline, which including color palette, fonts, typography system.

For homepage, because it is our entrance page, we try to deliver the joy and durability of honeycomb sofa, our only product at that time, for the first impression for visitors. The first section of homepage is a background motion video, due to its paper stucture, it will be better to demonstrate via a video.

To make the website flow more easier to purchase, we put a “Have a seat ”flowing buttom on right side, which will follow the scroll when viewing. After clicking “Have a seat” buttom, visitors will directly go into SHOP page, same as clicking SHOP on the navigator. In SHOP page, visitors can see all products we have -- the FlexibleLove sofa. At that time we only have 1 category in different colors. We named each color by feelings, and it’s all related to nature mineral, from brown one to white one, listed as EARTH, SANDSTONE, MARBLE. We want our costomers feel products’ names are related to the nature, same as the main material of product -- paper.

Official catalogue for download. The design followed SHOP page from website.

‘Cart’ page on phone.

‘Blog’ page on phone.

‘Checkout’ page on phone.

After finishing the construction of laptop version, we start working on the RWD system, which means website on laptop, tablet, phone are linkage. Thanks to the technology, smart phones makes purchase more convinent. More and more users using online shop to place an order, from daily necessities to luxuries, now we even give them an option for furnitures. A mature online shop must be clearly and easy understanding in their webflows. Especially in smart phone, we have limited space so we need to cut down all the unnecessities elements, wording and function, only leave the important things on it. Behaviors are different.

Every situation should be considered carefully, we use our own online shopping experience to design the workflows, thinking when comes to purchase, what’s the real important information to consumers, every instruction for placing an order needs to be clear and step by step. So does the interface design, the kerning, spacing and size of fonts or sentences, need to adjust to the most comfortable balance for visitors when viewing. Then we turned out to this completely nice phone site/ tablet site.

Another main target after rebrand is to develope the related new product line. Since this brand start, they only produce one kind of product in different colors, and selling it for almost 10 years. So it’s better to have a new product to refresh whether for customer side or brand side.

In the very beginning to brain storming the new product, it could be anything, even not furniture was ok, it was no limit and frame of this “new brand”. But when we thinking of : what is the best next step for brand after we know the needs of both sides? The answer was out obviously, we have a well developed manufacture line in producing honeycomb seating, so we decided to use this resource that we already have to reduce the risks. Considering the weight of first product SOFA is the way to much, bad for both user experience and shipping fee, so we decided to develope the BENCH series.

When started design the bench, the scale must be a huge difference from sofa, and also from our Canada com-petitor : Molo. We studied and improved ,and make our own scale. The second point is : shape. It’s all about shape in this kind of material. A good shape can make good identity of brand and also being highly recon-gnized and also show the beauty of material when using.

But shapes always follow the fun-ction. Every design move has its reason, so from all of these shapes, it naturally narrow down two shapes : B. and I. in one common : waist for strape to easily storage, but different curves. After all the comparing and testing, we choose B. as our final shape for bench series .

The final shape of the BENCH. The up-down symmetry shape can be seat in double side, also left-right sysmmetry can let users stretch both direction to make bench circle. The waist shape cut down some area, so the weight is lighter when in the same scale, and it also makes the space for user’s hands when stretching or shaping the bench. Beside the paper shape, the side board shape also need to be designed. According to the character of honeycomb paper, it will getting crush after use. From the side view, the MDF wood board have some space from up-down edges for the paper crush. The middle trench on left-right side of MDF board is for fixing the position when tie the strape.

The magnets which buried in MDF side board are also arranged to be matched no matter it’s upside down or left-right inversely when connecting to each other or itself.

Inside the box, besides the main product and additional strape for storage, there are series of brand’s visual indicator interacting with our customers. From top to down customers will see : Thank you note / 3 steps simple instruction / User guide handbook / Function note on strape and so on, to lead them start the new products they probably never use before, and experience the joy.

The packaging design of BENCH series is also user considered. From the SOFA product itself and packaging, we learn a lesson that it’s too giant and heavy to be move by one, and even two people still very hard to move. Thanks to the much more light weight of BENCH, we are able to design a handle for shortly lifting and grabing by one person, and the apperance just look like the hand suit case. The weight won’t be a bother anymore for both customers or delivery staffs. Outside the boxs we can see the product names in the front, also color stickers on the side to easily discriminate different color benches for factory staffs.

After tying the strape on bench, it can be lifting as well by only single hand. Consider of the environment, we hope the packagings are not just a one-time-packaging, which lead to huge amount of trash and waste. That is the reason why we choose the hard cardboard and good quality of all material in packaging.

Besides the enamel coating, another main challenge is the combination of metal craps. Good combination makes brand new form, but also keep the original characters of each object itselves. So how to balance the aesthetics between single object and the overall form at the same time is important. For this purpose,over 50

Besides the enamel coating, another main challenge is the combination of metal craps. Good combination makes brand new form, but also keep the original characters of each object itselves. So how to balance the aesthetics between single object and the overall form at the same time is important. For this purpose,over 50

Enamel Experiment is a conceptual project of transforming abandoned metalwares into living products via reform, reassemble and refinnishing surface with enamel coating. The most challenging part of this project is enamel coating. How to coating enamel on these bad quality metalwares?As knowing, the enamel glaze can only apply on specific kinds of metal, like pure gold, silver, copper...etc because of the chemical reaction.It must be those very high quality metal kinds and clean surface, or enamel can not attach to surface successfully. So, this is the most big challenge of this project. Robin Mathew once said “design is where science and art break even.” which describing the whole spirit of this project so well in a sentence.

Besides the enamel coating, another main challenge is the combination of metal craps. Good combination makes brand new form, but also keep the original characters of each object itselves. So how to balance the aesthetics between single object and the overall form at the same time is important. For this purpose,over 50

Enamel Experiment is a conceptual project of transforming abandoned metalwares into living products via reform, reassemble and refinnishing surface with enamel coating. The most challenging part of this project is enamel coating. How to coating enamel on these bad quality metalwares?As knowing, the enamel glaze can only apply on specific kinds of metal, like pure gold, silver, copper...etc because of the chemical reaction.It must be those very high quality metal kinds and clean surface, or enamel can not attach to surface successfully. So, this is the most big challenge of this project. Robin Mathew once said “design is where science and art break even.” which describing the whole spirit of this project so well in a sentence.

Besides the enamel coating, another main challenge is the combination of metal craps. Good combination makes brand new form, but also keep the original characters of each object itselves. So how to balance the aesthetics between single object and the overall form at the same time is important. For this purpose,over 50Besides the enamel coating, another main challenge is the combination of metal craps. Good combination makes brand new form, but also keep the original characters of each object itselves. So how to balance the aesthetics between single object and the overall form at the same time is important. For this purpose,over 50

Besides the enamel coating, another main challenge is the combination of metal craps. Good combination makes brand new form, but also keep the original characters of each object itselves. So how to balance the aesthetics between single object and the overall form at the same time is important. For this purpose,over 50Besides the enamel coating, another main challenge is the combination of metal craps. Good combination makes brand new form, but also keep the original characters of each object itselves. So how to balance the aesthetics